• Complain

David Kushner - The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise

Here you can read online David Kushner - The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. City: New York City, year: 2019, publisher: Simon Schuster, genre: Non-fiction / History. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

David Kushner The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise
  • Book:
    The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Simon Schuster
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2019
  • City:
    New York City
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

An engrossing microcosm of the internets Wild West years (Kirkus Reviews), award-winning journalist David Kushner tells the incredible battle between the founder of Match.com and the con man who swindled him out of the website Sex.com, resulting in an all-out war for control for what still powers the internet today: love and sex.
In 1994, visionary entrepreneur Gary Kremen used a $2,500 loan to create the first online dating service, Match.com. Only 5 percent of Americans were using the internet at the time, and even fewer were looking online for love. He quickly bought the Sex.com domain too, betting the combination of love and sex would help propel the internet into the mainstream.
Imagine Kremens surprise when he learned that someone named Stephen Michael Cohen had stolen the rights to Sex.com and was already making millions that Kremen would never see. Thus follows the wild true story of Kremens and Cohens decade-long battle for control. InThe Players Ball, author and journalist David Kushner provides a front seat to these must-read Wild West years online, when innovators and outlaws battled for power and money.
This cat-and-mouse game between a genius and a con man changed the way people connect forever, and is key to understanding the rise and future of the online world.
Kushner delivers a fast-paced, raunchy tale of sex, drugs, and dial-up. Publishers Weekly

David Kushner: author's other books


Who wrote The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.


Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.


Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

For Sue my perfect match Live in fragments no longer Only connect and the - photo 1

For Sue, my perfect match

Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

E. M. Forster, Howards End

KATE ( SINGING ) : The internet is really, really great!

TREKKIE MONSTER : For porn.

Avenue Q: The Musical

CHAPTER 1
THE WORLD WILD WEST

No one expected things to get so dirty.

It was just a local election, and a seemingly inconsequential one at that, a seat on the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors. The seven-person board manages the water system and flood control for the 1.9 million residents of the California county, which includes Silicon Valley: patching dams, overseeing water treatment plants, stocking sandbags when creeks overflow, and so on. Its a noble but unglamorous public service compared to the jetset lives of the tech titans in town. The only residents who usually bother to attend the public meetings are a handful of retirees, and the homeless woman who often sleeps in the back.

But, in 2014, voters were more interested than ever. Water district elections are usually low-keyif not boringaffairs, the San Jose Mercury News reported. Not this year. The two-man race had become the most vicious, and confounding, in the Santa Clara Valley Water Districts eighty-five-year history. Thered been allegations of corruption, sexual depravity, scandalous lies. For reasons no one could gather, Gary Kremen, a heavyset, disheveled, fifty-one-year-old dot-com multimillionaire, Deadhead, Stanford MBA, and self-described kook, shelled out $408,492largely from his own pocketto beat incumbent Brian Schmidt, an earnest forty-seven-year-old environmental attorney whod devoted his career to the cause. Why is he spending so much? Schmidt told the Mercury News . I dont know what to say.

The water of Silicon Valley pumped through the heart of Schmidt, who came off like an Eagle Scout. Hed earned his law degree from Stanford, labored locally as an environmental attorney, and blogged about the box turtles he saw while cleaning up the coast. For the past four years, he had proudly served on the Water District board. His fight for the potable reuse of recycled waste water, which could supply half the countys drinking supply, helped him earn multiple media endorsements. But with only a few days until the election, and his money (and dreams) running out, he finally had enough of Kremens Animal House behavior.

One morning in late October, Schmidt bicycled alone to a dried-up pond in the woods near his home in Palo Alto to shoot a last-ditch campaign video for YouTube. Slowly panning his camera across the landscape, he filmed the muddy field limned with dying brown trees. What youre seeing around you is the effect of the California drought, he narrated solemnly. Then Schmidt set the camera in place, and stepped in front of it to tape himself. He was prematurely gray but boyish, and wore a blue Re-Elect Brian Schmidt T-shirt. I am kind of proud to say I am now a target of a negative mailer, he said.

Schmidt approached the camera and held up the cover of said mailer: a custom greeting card that mocked his recycled waste water plan. BRIAN SCHMIDT wants to get our drinking water from OUR TOILETS , the card read.

Its a picture of menext to a toilet, Schmidt explained. It claims not to be from my opponent, but you can take that for whatever you want to take it for. This is a very expensive thing, where my opponent has put a lot of money into the race.

As Schmidt opened the greeting card, it played an audio snippet from one of his stump speeches: Im advocating treatment of waste water to drinkable levels. Then a womans voice came on: Brian Schmidt wants my family to drink water from a toilet? Ewww! she said. Say no to toilet water! Say no to Brian Schmidt for Santa Clara Valley Water District.

As his camera rolled, Schmidt stepped back into focus with the beleaguered expression of a science teacher whod sat on one too many whoopee cushions. Pedantically, he explained that people were already drinking recycled waste water from Singapore to the International Space Station. This is astronaut water were talking about, he went on. Its healthy enough for them, its healthy for the rest of us. He appealed to the brainiacs in town to give him, and his astronaut water, a chance. This is Silicon Valley, he said, as he concluded recording the video he later posted online. This is a highly educated area. We understand what we can do with technology.

But few understood technology better than the highly educated man so curiously obsessed with beating him, Gary Kremen. Silicon Valley had seen its share of iconoclastic visionariesSteve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerbergbut none like Kremen. Though largely unfamiliar to the outside world, he was among the most prescient entrepreneurs in the history of the internet. In business, and in life, true visionaries not only have the foresight to find the next frontier, but the confidence to bet on it. Kremen was legendary among those in the know for his uncanny cocktail of both. As veteran technology investor Ron Posner put it, Hes very energetic, very creative, very smartand never gives up.

Kremen is the father of online dating. In 1993, he founded what was essentially the firstnow biggestdating site, Match.com. Despite about only 5 percent of Americans being online around that time, Kremen brashly told a skeptical TV reporter in 1995 that his invention was going to change the world. Match.com will bring more love to the planet than anything since Jesus Christ, the then thirty-one-year-old declared in his nasally toned Chicago accent. The fact that this prediction was coming from some Belushi in a stained tie-dye T-shirt sprawled on a red bean bag made it all the more dubious.

But as Kremen would prove time and time again, his hunch was right. Match.com became an international phenomenon, spreading to more than twenty-five countries in eight languages with more than 42 million members, and becoming the basis of todays $2 billion online dating industry. The company Kremen started with a $2,500 credit card loan now has a value of $3.5 billion. At a time when most businesspeople barely understood, let alone paid attention to, the internet, Kremen was among the first to figure out how to make money online. Even more radically, he transformed the way people meet and marry in the digital age. As he wrote with characteristic humor on his Water District campaign website bio, I am responsible for over 1,000,000 babies!

But according to his detractors, he was responsible for much that was wrong with the internet too. The genius of love was also the sultan of sex, specifically Sex.com, one of the most notorious websites ever online. And it was his epic battle over Sex.com that made him most legendary of all.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise»

Look at similar books to The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise»

Discussion, reviews of the book The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.